By Bala Ibrahim
As I write this article, a 24-hour curfew is in operation in Borno, Kano, and Yobe, and I learned, that Gombe state is contemplating the implementation of the same. The reason is simple: lawlessness has come upon them, under the people’s protest, which according to the planners, was meant to be peaceful. From the onset, the justification for the protest was repeatedly the issue of poverty, which they blamed on bad governance.
No one can argue against the fact that indeed there is poverty in the land. Indeed there is hunger in the land. Unemployment, inflation, and insecurity have become the unintended partners of our country, Nigeria. No one can also argue against the fact that these are sinister vices that can besiege a country, as a result of unrighteousness.
A visit to the dictionary gave me the definition of bad governance as a situation where a government fails to adhere to the principles and practices that ensure accountability, transparency, fairness, and effective oversight of its operations.
With respect to the Nigerian situation, the question begging for an answer is, when did we arrive at the doorstep of these undesirable characteristics? 12 or 14 months ago, when President Bola Ahmed Tinubu assumed the leadership of Nigeria? If we put sentiments and political differences aside, objectivity would compel us to answer in the negative. Yes, negative.
For long, Nigeria has sadly been living in partnership with poverty. It is not the creation of President Tinubu, nor is it the making of the ruling APC. But the President and the party are committed to effecting a change, within a reasonable time.
According to statistics, despite our rich endowment of resources, including oil and minerals, Nigeria as a nation, has been struggling with staggering levels of poverty. Data from the World Bank paints a sobering picture: out of a population exceeding 200 million, over 104 million Nigerians live below the poverty line. This is sad, very sad, and something that should be looked into with patriotism, and not a poorly planned protest.
From the reports received, the protesters in Kano, Borno, and Kaduna, simply turned into thieves, carting away people’s properties in the name of hunger. The pictures I saw are sickening, saddening, and seriously skanky.
Those accusing their leaders of corruption and bad governance, have simply turned sleazy, at the slightest chance of coming into contact with other people’s property? Who is now the bad, between the leaders and the followers? And these are the same people patenting poverty to provoke the protest.
If the only instinct inside the mind of a person in poverty, is the temptation to steal, then that poverty-stricken person has a deficit of integrity, a deficit of morality, and a deficit of proper probity.
Contrary to the promises made by the planners, about their intent for a peaceful protest, the police in Kaduna said they have arrested some of the protesters with live bullets. Live bullets and firearms in the hands of a person on a peaceful protest? Maybe I have a problem with my thinking cap, but up till now, I cannot grasp, or come close to the correct comprehension of such a scenario.
It’s either the planners were acting with naivety, or they simply over-exaggerated the protest instinct, political consciousness, and the projected sense of honesty of some of our people in Nigeria.
Yes, there are many of us that are copy-and-paste patriots. Some of us are patriots by rhetoric, but thieves and traitorous by action. And same people are always the first to steal when placed in positions of trust. Why should we patent poverty in order to provoke a protest that would provide a cover for theft?
From the reports of previous protests or riots in Nigeria, mostly, small businesses are the ones that account for nearly ninety percent of the losses. Such businesses that are impacted by the effect of looting, in the areas in which unrest took place, hardly recover.
More so, all together, small firms on a monthly basis stood to lose incalculable amounts in their attempts to resume business operations. As a consequence, many small businesses become confronted with closure, for the simple reason that some people have patented poverty in order to provoke protests.
Lawyers have told us, and I expantiate a little, that every citizen of Nigeria is entitled to move freely throughout Nigeria and to reside in any part thereof, and at liberty to engage in any business permitted by law, and that, no citizen of Nigeria shall be expelled from Nigeria or refused entry thereby or exit therefrom, or have his business vandalized by miscreants, under whatever guise, I think.
If bad governance is a situation where a government fails to adhere to the principles and practices that ensure accountability, transparency, and fairness, with what happened today in Kano and other places, where the protesters turned into thieves, I think the time has arrived, for an additional lexicon, to take care of “Bad Followers”, particularly those of them that would patent poverty as a pretext for protest, in order to steal.
